I just took over a new team and have lost two games (against teams I thought I'd beat handily) in which I outshot them by a large margin (percentage, not volume), won the rebounding battle, and still took significantly fewer shots. I'm not sure how my opponent is getting up so many more shots. There has to be something that I'm not taking into account. I figured I'd get crushed on the glass (this is my first zone team), but I'm winning there. I am turning the ball over too much, but not enough to account for the discrepancy.

I'm sure I could go through the box score, record all the events one-by-one, and figure out what I'm doing wrong, but that sounds like work, so I thought I'd ask what I'm missing. The Baptist Bible and Occidental games are the ones that are confusing me, but I'd like to focus specifically on the Occidental second half, just to get something bite-sized.

Number of shots: 35-24 Occidental
Number of rebounds: 17-15 Greensboro
Number of turnovers: 9-3 Greensboro
Number of FTs: 3-3 (each team had an and-one and a two-shot foul. No one-and-ones)

I know the turnovers hurt me, but they didn't hurt me badly enough that my opponents would take 11 more shots than me. I figure if I win the rebounding battle by 2, lose the turnover battle by 6, and take the same number of free throws, my opponent should take 4 more shots than me. They took 11. What am I missing here? And how do I fix it, since I've now lost two games where it looks like I won pretty much every statistical category. Any thoughts?

Ah, thanks. Brain fart on my part. I needed to be looking at offensive rebounds and not overall rebounds, because my overall rebounding numbers are decent only because I'm shooting significantly better than they are.

On second thought, maybe my offensive rebounding isn't too much of a problem. I rebounded 44% of my own misses in the second half. Occidental rebounded 41% of their misses in the second half. So I really did have an edge on the glass, I just forgot to take into account that missing a lot of shots naturally leads to a lot of second shot opportunities. Which means I still won almost every statistical category and lost. Which is still frustrating. But at least I can make the math work out now.

Running zone puts you at a disadvantage when opponent gets offensive boards. Most times you will give up lots of Off RB's running zone due to the fact you can't box out. Looking at the box score, looks like the opponents bench outperformed yours as well. Opponent just got way more shots than you.

Posted by rednation58 on 2/5/2013 12:10:00 PM (view original):Running zone puts you at a disadvantage when opponent gets offensive boards. Most times you will give up lots of Off RB's running zone due to the fact you can't box out. Looking at the box score, looks like the opponents bench outperformed yours as well. Opponent just got way more shots than you.

I have always found this aspect of HD interesting. Take a look at who leads the Big East in rebounding. Cuse is #2. Obviously stats from RL are way off from HD, but there is no reason a zone team can't be just as good on the boards as a man team.

Posted by rednation58 on 2/5/2013 12:10:00 PM (view original):Running zone puts you at a disadvantage when opponent gets offensive boards. Most times you will give up lots of Off RB's running zone due to the fact you can't box out. Looking at the box score, looks like the opponents bench outperformed yours as well. Opponent just got way more shots than you.

I have always found this aspect of HD interesting. Take a look at who leads the Big East in rebounding. Cuse is #2. Obviously stats from RL are way off from HD, but there is no reason a zone team can't be just as good on the boards as a man team.

I've run some zone teams for a while now and at the end of the day a zone team will give up more offensive boards. RB's as a whole yes, a zone team could run the tables if you have the personnel, but the engine still will generate less offensive boards even if you have some of the most elite rebounders. Of course if Cuse is leading or second in the Big East for offensive boards, I would find this interesting.

Posted by rednation58 on 2/5/2013 12:10:00 PM (view original):Running zone puts you at a disadvantage when opponent gets offensive boards. Most times you will give up lots of Off RB's running zone due to the fact you can't box out. Looking at the box score, looks like the opponents bench outperformed yours as well. Opponent just got way more shots than you.

Yeah, I knew that'd be a problem in zone, but I still had a higher OREB% than my opponent's in that game. So I won FG% by a huge margin, I won OREB% by a small margin, and FTs were about the same. Only place I lost was turnovers, but I thought the rest would've compensated for that. I guess it didn't.

So I guess going forward I either need to increase my wins in FG% (unrealistic) and OREB% (maybe by running a 2-3 instead of 3-2, but I'd give up a lot with that) or decrease my turnovers (not quite sure how to do this with the guys currently on my roster)

if you're basing OREB's on percentage, I'm not sure if that's a good way to look at this. By shear volume of shots taken his OREB% would naturally be lower than yours. He had 14 more possessions than you did. I'm also not sold on 2-3 grabbing more OREB's than 3-2 either, RB's total yes but OREB... idk. I never got a straight answer from CS about OREB's so I don't know for sure. It honestly seems like a crapshoot with OREB.

Posted by rednation58 on 2/5/2013 12:10:00 PM (view original):Running zone puts you at a disadvantage when opponent gets offensive boards. Most times you will give up lots of Off RB's running zone due to the fact you can't box out. Looking at the box score, looks like the opponents bench outperformed yours as well. Opponent just got way more shots than you.

I have always found this aspect of HD interesting. Take a look at who leads the Big East in rebounding. Cuse is #2. Obviously stats from RL are way off from HD, but there is no reason a zone team can't be just as good on the boards as a man team.

I've run some zone teams for a while now and at the end of the day a zone team will give up more offensive boards. RB's as a whole yes, a zone team could run the tables if you have the personnel, but the engine still will generate less offensive boards even if you have some of the most elite rebounders. Of course if Cuse is leading or second in the Big East for offensive boards, I would find this interesting.

Posted by reddyred on 2/5/2013 2:56:00 PM (view original):if you're basing OREB's on percentage, I'm not sure if that's a good way to look at this. By shear volume of shots taken his OREB% would naturally be lower than yours. He had 14 more possessions than you did. I'm also not sold on 2-3 grabbing more OREB's than 3-2 either, RB's total yes but OREB... idk. I never got a straight answer from CS about OREB's so I don't know for sure. It honestly seems like a crapshoot with OREB.

I think you have it backwards. Because of sheer volume of shots, his OREB total will naturally be higher, even if my team is much better at rebounding. That's not something I can control. But I can, by game strategy or recruiting, control the OREB%, which is not affected at all my volume of shots. If I'm collecting my misses at a better rate than my opponent is collecting his misses, I'm doing my job on the glass. Somebody can check me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure you can't win eFG% and OREB% and lose the game unless you're losing at the line or losing turnover margin.

Posted by rednation58 on 2/5/2013 12:10:00 PM (view original):Running zone puts you at a disadvantage when opponent gets offensive boards. Most times you will give up lots of Off RB's running zone due to the fact you can't box out. Looking at the box score, looks like the opponents bench outperformed yours as well. Opponent just got way more shots than you.

Yeah, I knew that'd be a problem in zone, but I still had a higher OREB% than my opponent's in that game. So I won FG% by a huge margin, I won OREB% by a small margin, and FTs were about the same. Only place I lost was turnovers, but I thought the rest would've compensated for that. I guess it didn't.

So I guess going forward I either need to increase my wins in FG% (unrealistic) and OREB% (maybe by running a 2-3 instead of 3-2, but I'd give up a lot with that) or decrease my turnovers (not quite sure how to do this with the guys currently on my roster)

its the 14 extra shots, and your poor FT shooting, you probably should have had more than +4 points off FTs with him fouling 5 more times, if you werent missing a bunch (probably would have more FTAs too, assuming some 1 and 1s were missed). plus, he made 5 more 3s than you.

i think you are looking at rebounding wrong. on a rebound from your end of the court, you picked up 21 def rebs to his 12 off rebounds - you picked up under 64% of the boards on your side. on his side, he got 14 def rebs to your 7 off rebounds. thats about 67%... so from where im standing, he beat you % wise. he missed more shots, so you got more rebs overall, but thats not the point (i think)